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A Defense Department team was recently honored by a British chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear industry group. DOD was the first organization outside the United Kingdom to get top honors from the group known as CBRN UK. The team received its award for developing and operating the ship-mounted system that destroyed tons of Syrian chemical weapons last year. The Field Deployable Hydrolysis System was housed on the converted container ship MV Cape Ray. Tim Blades is the deputy director of program integration at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, which had a major hand in developing the technology. He joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive to discuss the technology and the challenges the team faced.

Only a few weeks ago, Army leadership was planning to shrink its force to levels unseen since before World War II. But that was before Islamic State terrorists threatened to take over Iraq and Syria, before Russia invaded Ukraine and before the U.S. began deploying 4,000 troops to West Africa to help control the Ebola outbreak. Now the Army's Chief of Staff, Gen. Ray Odierno, suggests the Army and political leaders need to rethink their plans. He spoke with Emily Kopp at the Association of the Army Expo about the Army's next steps.

"The immediacy is in the number of Europeans and other nationalities who have come
to the region to be a part of that ideology," said Joint Chiefs Chairman General
Martin Dempsey. He made the comments while discussing the strength of ISIL in Syria
and Iraq. The immediate problem for the U.S. he says is that some of those foreign
fighters which came from the U.S. may have already gone home.

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel called the crew aboard the U.S. ship MV Cape Ray Monday to congratulate the ship's crew on finishing their unprecedented work of neutralizing the most dangerous chemicals in Syria's declared stockpile at sea. The secretary said that by ridding the world of these materials, they - as part of an ongoing international effort to eliminate the Syrian chemical weapons arsenal - have helped make an important and enduring contribution to global security.

The Pentagon says the transfer of Syrian chemicals from the Danish container ship Ark Futura to the Motor Vessel Cape Ray is complete. Cape Ray departed the Italian port of Gioia Tauro on Monday for international waters in the Mediterranean Sea, where neutralization operations will soon begin. The neutralization process should take several weeks to complete. Secretary Hagel expressed his thanks to Danish and Italian authorities for their support in this process and said in a statement he "is enormously proud of everyone who helped make possible this safe and incident-free transfer."

White House officials held private meetings last week aimed at soothing lawmakers'
concerns over the U.S. posture in Syria, determining the future of the American
military presence in Afghanistan, and defense spending. Based on anonymous reports
from some in attendance, a May 20th meeting didn't turn out too well. At several
points during the meeting with Chief of Staff and National Security Advisor Susan
Rice, the participants began to leave one by one.